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merlot is the devil.

Drinking merlot is like drinking liquid satan. It possesses your entire body, steals your motor control and memory, and commonly causes you to wake up stark naked in your bed at 3pm the following day, wondering what on earth happened to you.

It was a Saturday night, and I, with three lovely friends, were at Rocky Mountain Tavern in Seoul for a Christmas-themed ladies night. Each ticket for the ladies night came with wine, dinner, and entertainment. We were running late and missed dinner, so we decided to just drink wine.

The entertainment, to our delight, turned out to be male strippers dressed as santa. For modesty’s sake, the strippers only took the top half of their outfits off, gyrating wildly in enormous red pants with fur trim. While chugging our way through three bottles of merlot, we catcalled and cheered the men on, shamelessly ogling their bare chests. My feet became extra hot from all the stomping and clapping, so I removed my boots and made at least five trips to the bathroom in my bare feet – an incredibly skeezy bathroom filled with broken glass and at least two strains of herpes.

Merlot causes bad things. Two bottles in, you’ll be flailing wildly, thinking you’re dancing like Britney Spears or at the very least, Justin Beiber, and enormous chunks of your night are rapidly becoming shrouded with mist. You down another glass and the next thing you know, you’re being dropped on your head by a stripper wearing santa pants.

From what I’ve managed to patch together, after the men had stopped dancing, I had literally climbed one male stripper, monkey style, and he was hauling me around the bar like a sack of cement. In my inebriated state, I decided it’d be fun to play a game more suited for a toddler than a merlot-soaked english teacher. I wrapped my legs around his waist like I was in some bizarre porn Christmas special, and threw myself backwards, my hands brushing the floor. He dutifully pulled me back up, and I threw myself backwards again – only this time, he dropped me on my head.

No one knows what happened after that. The next – and last – thing I remember of the evening is carefully navigating my way down the steep steps and then emerging onto the streets of Seoul. It was snowing.

I woke up completely naked in my bed the next day, my clothes just inside my front door, and the bottoms of my feet completely filthy. I’d like to say this experience taught me a lesson about the dangers of overindulging, but that would be a lie. There have been many such nights since then – although there have been no more stripper incidents.